


Perfect from the bottom to the top

by Ibbyliv



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Body Image, Eponine's shady past, Feminism, Friendship, Gen, General talk about being a girl, Girl Power, Girls' Night, Internalized Misogyny, International Women's Day, Slut Shaming, Sorry for the misogynistic language, Tumblr Prompt, drug mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 06:19:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3518612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ibbyliv/pseuds/Ibbyliv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was in need of powerful friends, of boys she would measure with their fists.<br/>What she failed to see, was that other girls could be powerful too, when their fists were put together with her own.</p><p>
  <em>Eponine’s life is full of things she’s never done. One of them, whether it makes sense or not, is an all-girls night.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perfect from the bottom to the top

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StarberryCupcake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarberryCupcake/gifts), [Screamingpoet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Screamingpoet/gifts).



> I wrote this a while ago as a response in starberry-cupcake's tumblr prompt that asked for Cosette, Eponine and Chetta sleepover and girls bonding and absence of internalized misogyny, but I might have failed on that part because I made it full of internalized misogyny. Most thoughts here are similar to ones I've had, and I hope you'll like it! I know I'm late for International Women's Day but it's been an exhausting week. If anything I write might seem to you offensive or misguided in any way, please tell me!  
> Dedicated to the wonderful starberry-cupcake who asked for it in first place and who is a powerful woman I look up to, and to my other perfect girl, Screamingfromrooftops, with whom I haven't spoken properly in quite a while because I'm a busy, tired, bad friend. (You don't have to read this if you're busy too, just know that ily <3)

Eponine’s life is full of things she’s never done. One of them, whether it makes sense or not, is an all-girls night. Even though nights with Jehan and Grantaire have always involved more braiding and nail art than what should be considered as healthy, a non-binary and a cis male person hardly count as female representation.

At five years old, she was a regular adorable child that ate maggots like all the other regular adorable children. Kids loved to invite her over and play family with her, even though they kept asking why she couldn’t invite them back. She made up all sorts of stories about her mum being a rich famous singer who couldn’t have children over because she needed her beauty sleep, or about how she needed to rest because they were expecting a new brother or sister (which turned out to be the actual case more often than not). At ten years old, she had fewer friends but good enough to let her hang out at their places until dark, and their parents started to worry that her parents rarely ever looked for her. At fourteen, she was old enough to be named the slut of the class, and she decided to own up to it, because as far as she remembered, ‘sluts’ were what her father hated most. At this point, her focus on protecting herself from boys was greater than her concern to be likeable to the girls, and the two could under no circumstances be aligned. Her family’s life was shady, she knew that by now, her father would hit her because she asked too many questions and teachers with their own questions couldn’t possibly be on her side. She was in need of powerful friends, of boys she would measure with their fists.

What she failed to see, was that other girls could be powerful too, when their fists were put together with her own.

Eponine’s father always called Cosette “the whore’s kid”, spitting it like dirt, as if it wasn’t _them_ Fantine worked for. How Cosette had come to live with them for a small part of Eponine’s childhood, she didn’t know, and little did she remember of anything they had shared or parted between them, apart from the shadow of a skinny, tiny kid with unwashed hair that was never as pretty and dark and shiny as her own. Another thing she didn’t know, was how they happened to find each other again almost fifteen years later, in the same group of friends, sharing feelings for the same boy, who had eyes for no one but Cosette, several pastel hair colors and quite a lot of kilos later, and Eponine wishes she wouldn’t feel so guilty to have bad thoughts about Cosette when she’s used to having bad thoughts about people, and then she wishes she could hate her, because she does, and it makes sense, and it’s fucking satisfying.

Until it isn’t.

So of course her idea of fun wouldn’t be spending it with her crush’s girlfriend puking sunshine all around and painting rainbows on her nails. When Musichetta invited them for a girls night in because Joly and Bossuet would spend the weekend away, she knew she couldn’t say no, because Musichetta can get quite scary, and at the same time she’s a genuinely nice person who can make you feel ashamed of yourself. And Eponine has enough to be ashamed of already, like the fact that she dropped out of high school to sell drugs once, so yeah.

“That’s gender discrimination,” Grantaire groans jokingly. “Why wasn’t I invited?”

“Because we’re gonna have lots of lesbian threesome sex and we don’t need your greedy male objectifying gaze,” she hisses sarcastically.

“Hey!” Grantaire punches her shoulder lightly. “What about  _I’m really fucking gay_?”

“Yeah right,  _you’re really fucking gay_  whenever it suits you though. There’s less bisexual erasure when you bring pretty girls home.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you more.”

“I shall do my best.” He blows her a theatrical kiss. “Have fun watching Ten Things I Hate About You and don’t try to murder Cosette, cause she’ll probably get your sorry ass first.”

Thankfully Musichetta hands her a beer the moment she opens the door because she’s as awesome as that, and it turns out that there’s more booze and pizza than sparkly cupcakes and pink lemonade (though with Cosette you never run out of those, and she isn’t even going to pretend that she hasn’t been dreaming of that damn mint frosting for weeks). Cosette is already there, beautiful and full of smiles, throned up on Musichetta, Bossuet and Joly’s giant bed, looking like a macaron in her pastel pyjamas, complete with a giant pale blue bow atop of her head. She’s like those pieces of cake that you’re sure you’ll cringe at the taste of, sugary enough to make you barf, until you finally take a bite and they’re so good that you can do nothing about it.

She greets her shyly, if not slightly intimidated. Eponine doesn’t know if she enjoys it all that much anymore. Cosette has stopped trying to hug her or display affection in any other way, it was awkward enough for both of them the first times. They’re not friends and she’s too tired to fuss over the absurd possibility all over again. She likes the rain, she’s accepted the misery of wet clothes and hair plastered uncomfortably over her body and dripping on Musichetta’s floor. Cosette has too much sunshine for her own good, and has tried hard enough to find it. Eponine has forgotten how to try, and that sums it all up well enough.

Musichetta brings the booze, the laptop, the board games and the Cat. Eponine sits on a cushion on the floor, feeling like her limbs are numb and made of tin, bars of a cage that press constantly against her sides and will never free her of her suspicion and discomfort. She waits around the corner with an almost masochistic paranoia as she does every time, for the first time Cosette will mention Marius about one thing or another, for the crippling, sinking feeling inside her chest as her mind will replay the image of his face as he melts for her, the image of them doing things together, things she’ll never do with him outside of her pathetic daydreaming. She’s faced with an uncharacteristically sharper and more uncomfortable pain when she realizes that Cosette is actually making an effort  _not_ to mention Marius and to slip around the subject without making her uneasy. It makes her even more paranoid, the fact that she’s being excluded, that she’s shut outside her cage and can’t see what’s happening between the two of them before her very eyes, only they can see her and feel sorry for her, and she wants to shut her eyes and open them again and have them disappear.

“How was work today?” Cosette asks, sounding genuinely interested and looking entirely too focused on whatever answer she’s going to get.

“Good enough I guess,” she shrugs her shoulders, almost grateful that she breaks the silence between them, “considering I didn’t have to threaten anybody I’d chop their arms off the roots.”

“I read about that lady the other day, you know,” Musichetta mutters thoughtfully, passing a beer over at Cosette and nibbling on her pizza. “She invented a thing that people can put in their vagina and it sort of bites the rapist’s dick when they try to force themselves inside?” Both Cosette and Eponine wait patiently for her to finish. “I freaked out yesterday. With myself, with my boys, I don’t even know. I just… I was excited to hear about it. I told them, full of excitement and pride, and saw their faces go pale with horror. I don’t know if it was because they have dicks or not, it’s just… all of our boys are hardcore feminists, and I found it pretty logical the moment I read it. I mean,  _of course_ it’s cruel, but so is raping women who, funnily enough,  _were asking for it_ the same way you were asking for it when you tried to shove your dick where it doesn’t belong _._ ” She places down a disc with cake, suddenly looking as if she doesn’t want to eat it. “I thought my excitement was justified, and then it wasn’t, and sometimes it freaks me out when I don’t agree with my boys, and I don’t know who is right and who is wrong, if I’m just angry and extreme or if they’re still thinking behind some lines.”

“Our group is in dire need of more female representation, that’s what I know,” Cosette frowns slightly. “They’re so good, they really are, and they’re making progress. It’s not like any of us wasn’t taught things the wrong way. I remember when I first met Enjolras, the fiercest defender of queer and woman rights,” she giggles softly. “He was the personification of the _capitalism before patriarchy_ cliché moaning, dismissing the feminist agenda and shouting before hearing.”

“Now he’s such a dear!” Musichetta coos.

“Apart from when he makes old people cry.”

“No, but you know what? You’re right. I really do think they need us in the group. They’re trying so hard to do good, to help people, to speak for their problems and they have all the best intentions. Some of them are really fucking educated on the issue, like Courfeyrac and Combeferre and Feuilly, but then again, we should talk more about themselves and let them speak less on their account.”

Eponine finds herself lifting an eyebrow. “You mean because they have male privilege or something?”

Musichetta thinks for a while, lazily stroking the cat’s back before raising her dark eyes. “No. I think they need to talk over the privilege, I think that everyone should, and I admire them from that. No, I just wish we’d do it more because it’s our voices that need to be strengthened as well.”

Musichetta has Cosette’s utmost attention. “You know, most of them time,” she mutters, “I find myself wishing I’d think that way when I was younger.”

“My childhood and adolescence would have been so much better, so much more profitable without all the internalized missogyny,” Musichetta sighs somewhat wearily. Something gets stuck in Eponine’s head. Did she just hear Musichetta say that? The philosophy and gender studies major? The personification of political correctness, the loudest voice and the first bust in feminist protests? “I mean… being a girl is hard as fuck on its own. Well, being a girl  _of color_ is harder.” Eponine knows  _that_ well enough. “Not just the incorporated racism that my dad and my brother had to face every day, not just the conviction of society you can’t do this or that because you’re born female. The list of things expected from you grows longer, things you don’t necessarily hate the essence of, but their oppression.” She lowers her eyes to examine her nails, round, clean, and unpolished. “I never hated being sexy  _per se._ Hell, I’d like to be free to feel that way. I was a woman before I was just good at algebra, I was part of a Benetton ad before I was part of the school picture, I was a 34C before I had the time to be a child. I thought I hated girls, but what I really hated was that we never really got a choice.”

“You’re always so gentle and quiet,” Eponine grimaces incredulously, “but then someone tries to hurt a girl and  _puff_! You embroider her hair with their insides! This is bullshit, I can’t picture you hating  _girls_!”

“I did,” Musichetta smiles faintly, and it’s not without embarrassment. “I thought they were the reason for my oppression, their stupid obsessions and their boring conversations and their judgmental looks. I took pride in being a different special snowflake when that really shouldn’t be the case. I preached I should have been a man while  _I wanted_ to do girly things. I decided I thought like a boy when really, it was just a girl having my thoughts. I had to prove I’m better. I started studying all the time and I stopped going out and I became the Hermione Granger of the class.”

“Technically, you still are. We have to drag you out of the house like Enjolras to make sure you won’t grow roots on your desk, you weirdo.”

“Well, yeah. Because during the process I realized I just wanted to be  _good enough_. I still want to prove them so that they can’t get me down, but I’m not either going to do it by getting others down with me.”

Eponine turns to Cosette. “What about you, princess?” she asks with no venom in her lightened voice. “Did you too revolt against the oppression of your gender?”

Cosette takes a cupcake in her hands and nibbles on the frosting with the pride of a mother admiring her child (with the only difference that the mother – hopefully – isn’t going to eat said child). A hint of a smile flickers on her lips. “Well,” she murmurs, raising her eyes which, oddly enough, do not seem to be smiling, “not really. I mean… I never tried to deny my femininity, you know? I always thought it was a beautiful thing, I always imagined my mother and what I remembered from her, I knew she’d found it a beautiful thing. She called me princess too,” she chuckles softly. “Funny, isn’t it?” Eponine feels a little sick, and she doesn’t exactly know what for. “I just thought I wasn’t good enough for it. Papa sent me to a Catholic school. It was great, because we were all girls and we developed such power and solidarity between us, and I’ve kept some great friends from school, but we were taught that feeling good for ourselves was vanity and that we should be guilty if we wanted to be pretty. I spent some time being harsh on myself. I’ve even considered…” her face goes pale for a moment there, and Musichetta frowns, taking her eyes away from the Cat that’s lying on her feet.

“What have you considered?”

“Fuck, this is horrible, I’m horrible,” Cosette groans, throwing her head back upon the pillow and staring at the ceiling. Eponine’s mouth has gone dry.

“What have you considered, Cosette?”

“Well, I have considered that Papa might have been relieved that I was, you know… fat. I know that I shouldn’t say that about me because he’s been wonderful and he loves me so much and he supports me with Marius  _so_  much, but no one ever really made an effort to make me feel _good_ about the way I looked, you know? He appreciated everything I did and I was pretty in his eyes, but…”

“Wait, what do you  _mean_?” Musichetta gasps in shock. “That you’ve got issues with your appearance? But you’re… you’re fucking  _gorgeous_!”

“You’re a fashion blogger!” Eponine is left gaping, having forgotten everything about Cosette being with Marius and standing in the way of her happiness in any way, because  _fuck,_ if Cosette has had self-esteem issues then what is there supposed to happen with the rest of them mortals? “You have all those amazing clothes and you combine them and you smile at the camera with all your professional makeup and your freaking hair colors, what do you even _mean_?”

“Hey,” Cosette smiles, looking somewhat embarrassed, “hey, you’re so good, both of you… but I’m working on it. I really am. You don’t need to worry about me, okay? People will keep saying things, the world is not ready for us yet, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do it.”

“I’ve always thought you don’t give a single shit about things people would say, or… I don’t even know. It’s just; you’ve always looked so  _tough_ , man, in your frilly, pastel punk way!”

“Toughness can mean many things,” Cosette raises her shoulders. Her fingers start to fiddle with the hemline of her polar bear pyjama top, stretched over her sides, buttons pushed against her breasts. Eponine watches her with a lump on her throat. Chubby fingers, soft and pale, she can see the constellations of veins under the transparent skin of her hands, she can almost sense the faint tremble of her hands as a thought becomes another smile on her lips, distant and personal and yet shared with them, and she feels so honoured, and something makes her want to kiss those hands

_Is this the enemy you were set for?_

_can this be the enemy_

“Your nails,” she hears her voice coming hoarse out of her own mouth.“I mean, not that I don’t love that we vomit our souls right now, it’s been all too deep and shit, but man, your nails are just fucking fantastic.”

Cosette stares at the beautiful art of her nails, looking quite taken aback at the remark she’d never expected from Eponine. “Thanks! I can –” she looks up hesitantly, and Eponine feels her cheeks prickling. “I can do your own too, if you want!”

She can feel Musichetta’s glance burning on her. Her mouth is still dry, but at least she can swallow. “I would – really like that, yes.”

Cosette’s face lights up. “We should watch a movie while we do it! An all-girls one!”

“Put La Vie d’Adèle and I swear I’ll puke on you.”

“Of course we won’t, we have better things to watch than objectification, close ups of hair strands, and people telling us that lesbian relationships can’t work because too much spaghetti!”

“Léa Seydoux is gift to humanity though.”

“Agreed.”

“We could watch that movie where she plays about Marie Antoinette.”

“Nah, I’ve watched that,  _boring_!”

“Think of what misogyny did to Marie Antoinette.”

“Hey, you should read my essay on the women of the French Revolution!”

Cosette takes Eponine’s hands on her lap and starts working on her nails.  

“Till you decide on a movie I’m gonna braid your hair!” Musichetta winks and stands up, looking way too satisfied from this development and causing the Cat to screech and jump off the bed.

“You should,” Cosette hums pleasantly, getting all her nail polishes on her beds as Musichetta puts on tacky music. She raises her eyes to Eponine. “Because you’ve got the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen!”

Musichetta grins widely to both of them. Eponine might still have trouble to figure out the friend, but for once in her life she knows who’s not the enemy.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "All About That Bass", which I might consider in need of some work on the 'self love is for everyone' part, I adore, because I might be one of the 'skinny bitches' and I might have my self-esteem issues about it like most people, but I wouldn't dare to compare what I might have gone through with the results of fat shaming, since my body type has enough representation and is considered as "healthy" (even though it may not be), therefore I don't think we should blame All About That Bass which is an important and beautiful and catchy song <3  
> If I'm offending anyone in any way it's due to ignorance, so please call me out on it. Thank you for reading!


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